India and China grappling with AIDS, each in their own bottom-up way

■"India Steps Away from the Old Song and Dance: Bollywood Film Is First Mainstream Offering to Directly Address HIV Epidemic," by John Lancaster, Washington Post, 29 August 2004, p. A18.

■"China's Orphans Feel Brunt of Power: Party Thwarts AIDS Activist's Unofficial School," by Philip P. Pan, Washington Post, 14 September 2004, p. A1.

India's first big Bollywood film looks at an HIV-infected woman who loses her job and then fights back to regain her dignity. Sound familiar? It should, it's basically a "Philadelphia" redux, absent the usual Bollywood formula of "seven fights, ten songs, four kisses." Big stars play the lead, their excuses being the same ones Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks offered way back when: they wanted to stretch themselves as actors.

This is a big deal. Bollywood films have a huge Gap audience. Why? Most are about the clash of modernity and tradition: daughter of traditional dad falls for modern lover and Ö well, you know the rest. So for Bollywood to finally tackle AIDS this unsparingly (she gets it from sex, not some transfusion), this issue really comes out of the taboo closet in the world's second-largest country.

Meanwhile, the stigma attached to HIV in China seems as strong as ever, as witnessed by the rough treatment an unofficial AIDS orphanage has received. Here's the key analysis on that one:

The party still tries to control all social organizations in China. But after a quarter-century of capitalist-style economic reforms, Chinese enjoy greater prosperity and personal freedom than ever before under Communist rule, and growing numbers are taking advantage of both to band together and campaign for causes as varied as environmental protection, and end to domestic violence and the preservation of Chinese architecture.

The party has said it welcomes the rise of these civic groups, recognizing that they can provide much-needed services as the government sheds the welfare commitments of its socialist past. But it has also expressed worry that they might threaten the party's monopoly on power, and it has tried to exercise control by setting up its own organizations, limiting the number of new ones that people can establish and requiring them to find government sponsors. At times, the party simply declares a group illegal and crushes it.

Tricky yes, but remember my point: direction is critical not degree. China is moving in the right direction, at a pace it can handle politically. Let their own "pain" guide them, I say, rather than lecturing them from afar. This is a sensible people and a pragmatic leadership. We could have a lot worse in both instances.